OMNIUM SANCTORUM HIBERNIAE

Category: Irish Saints

  • Saint Craobhnad, July 17

    I have withdrawn the former post for Saint Craebhnat (Craobhnad) of Clenor at this date as I realized I had been misled by a nineteenth-century writer into misidentifying this holy woman with the County Cork Saint Cránaid, subject of a very brief late ‘Life’ detailing the lengths to which she went to discourage a potential suitor. As we can see from Canon O’Hanlon’s account below, he shared this opinion, but modern scholar Pádraig Ó Riain in his 2011 Dictionary of Irish Saints suggests that the Saint Craobhnad commemorated on July 17 is more likely to be Craobhnad of Kilcreevanty, County Galway. He tells us that there is nothing recorded of the saint, although her church is mentioned in the Annals. She is thus distinct from the Saint Cránaid associated with Clenor, who is the actual subject of the Life. Before moving to Canon O’Hanlon’s account, we can turn to the Irish calendars which are the only source for Saint Craobhnad. On July 17 The Martyrology of Gorman records the name ‘Craebnat’, with a note adding ‘virgin’, whilst the Martyrology of Donegal records ‘Craebhnat, Virgin’ . Her name is not found on the earlier Martyrology of Oengus and the Martyrology of Tallaght records a Saint Corpnata on this day, whom Canon O’Hanlon suggests might be our elusive Saint Craebhnat (Craobhnad):

    St. Craebhnat, Virgin

    The name, Corpnata, occurs in the Martyrology of Tallagh, at the 17th of July. It seems very possible, that an Irish Life of St. Creunata, transcribed by Brother Michael O’Cleary, had reference to this holy woman, and it yet exists in the Burgundian Library at Bruxelles. Some notices—most probably regarding this saint—or it may have been a Life, seem to have been prepared by Colgan for publication, at the 17th of July, as on the posthumous list of his Manuscripts we find a St. Cranata, Virgin, entered. It is likely, this was another form of St.Craebhnat’s or Corpnata’s name. In the Martyrology of Donegal, Craebhnat, Virgin, is recorded at this same date.

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  • The Venerable Matthew Talbot:’Spiritually Akin to the Great Heroes of the Ancient Irish Church.’

    A Homely Relic of a Humble Man


    Although the early medieval Irish saints are the usual focus of this blog, its title is ‘All the Saints of Ireland’ and thus by marking the centenary of the death of The Venerable Matthew Talbot, I am not straying from my brief. For by his ascetical lifestyle, Matt Talbot (May 2 1856-June 7 1925) has a particular link to the early Irish saints, one which Father James Cassidy, writing just a few years after Matt’s death, identified:

    IN the golden days of her early monastic church Ireland could boast of an asceticism most probably unrivalled throughout the whole Christian world. Great austerities were a part of the daily life of the monk, and, because the monastic ideal governed the Celtic church, the monk demanded that the ordinary layman doing penance for his sins should do so in the most thorough fashion. Thus it came to pass that severe self-discipline became a marked feature of Irish Christian tradition and a virtue sorely needed in later days to maintain the faith in the land when the cross of persecution dwelt therein for centuries. Thanks to these facts, there is still in Ireland a clear recognition of the cross as something necessary and blessed in the Christian life.



    Of the survival of this tradition of the Cross in modern days we have splendid proof in the life of MattTalbot. Though only a humble labourer far removed from the influence of conventual discipline, the record of his austerities bears comparison with the best of saintly anchorite or monk of old.



    Accordingly we find him in the first days of his changed life never in the enjoyment of a full meal, and partaking of no meat on Wednesdays, Fridays or Saturdays. Night-time saw him stretch his weary limbs on a plank-bed with very scanty covering. And to add to the sacrifice of abstention from drink, he forsook the pipe which most manual workers love so much. All this, surely, was a respectable start on the way of the Cross for one whose day’s work made such a demand on his physical resources.



    All this, however, was little compared with the sacrifices he made when he began to find his full spiritual stride. On Sundays he was content with one fairly substantial meal, or two very light ones. Dry bread and black tea was his fare for Mondays. Tuesdays and Thursdays were as rigorous, as Mondays, except for the taking of a little meat. Wednesdays excluded meat, but sometimes permitted a little butter. Fridays were days of full fast, whilst Saturdays and vigils of feasts added to rigid fasting the exclusion of milk. Lent he observed daily by two slight meals without meat, butter or milk. Every day in June witnessed a, similar fast in honour of the Sacred Heart…. 



    …Profoundly, indeed, did he share in the sacrificial folly of the “King of Penitents ” – as a note of his expressed it- “who pass for fools in the opinion of the world.”

    

Rev. James F. Cassidy, ‘Matt. Talbot: A Great Penitent’. The Irish Monthly, 61 (No. 720), (Jun., 1933), 374–379.

    Passionist Father Edmund of Mount Argus in Dublin, who wrote the foreword to Father Cassidy’s book Matt Talbot: The Irish Worker’s Glory, commented in like vein:


    The emergence of a figure like Matt Talbot in our days is an unique thing. In the jargon of modern psychologists, it is a spiritual atavism, a throw-back to days long passed away. It is equivalent to the apparition of the sixth-century hermit amidst the rush and bustle of to-day. Considered under this aspect, the figure of Matt Talbot has a two-fold significance.



    He is in the great tradition of Gaelic spirituality. Despite the lapse of centuries, despite the vast change of conditions and circumstances, despite the vicissitudes of the race, Matt Talbot is spiritually akin to the great heroes of the ancient Irish Church. Their austerities were the austerities which he practised; St. Kevin of Glendalough, or St. Enda of Aran would recognise in him the essential outline of their own lives. The extraordinary nature of this thing is not at first obvious. The same truth appears at two ends of a tradition which has stretched-unobserved but imperishable-over an interval of a thousand years.



    And this, moreover, has happened apparently without any conscious striving or deliberate imitation, for in the books used by Matt Talbot there are none which treat of the Saints of Ireland. This remarkable fact deserves prominence, for as Chesterton has well said, using a similar argument in favour of St. Francis of Assisi, “the tradition has preserved the truth.”

…

    But it is the mode of his being Catholic that lends such vital importance to his life. For Matt Talbot was a contemplative, one whose soul continually turned towards God, one whose mind was absorbed in God. The magnitude of this achievement has not, we think, been sufficiently recognised. By far the great majority of contemplatives, whether canonised or not, have been members of religious orders. Their lives were sheltered by the walls of monastery or convent, the distractions of the world were reduced to a minimum or eliminated altogether; they were helped by the good example of companions, and were assisted by assiduous direction and frequent spiritual conferences. Not so with Matt Talbot. For a cloister he had the busy streets of his native city; for a cell the back room of a tenement house; for companions men who had little appreciation of spiritual realities; for a place of retirement a shed in the corner of the timber-yard.

    Rev. J. F. Cassidy, Matt Talbot: The Irish Worker’s Glory (Newman Press, 1948), ix-xi.


    Whilst I appreciate that for many people today it is Matt’s patronage of those who struggle with addiction which they find most compelling, for me it is what Fathers Cassidy and Edmund CP have identified above – the adoption by a layman of the modern era of the ascetical discipline more usually associated with the early monastic saints of Ireland. Unlike Saint Kevin, surrounded by the natural beauty of the monastic city of Glendalough, Matt was an urban hermit in a very different environment. I found Father Edmund’s contention that Matt had adopted this lifestyle without any conscious desire to imitate the Irish saints, particularly interesting. Mary Purcell in the appendices to her book Remembering Matt Talbot lists Lives of the Irish Saints among the tomes read by Matt and the Life of Saint Patrick by Father Morris, the Life of Saint Laurence O’Toole and The Ancient Irish Church by Father Gaffney among those lent to him by a friend. Whilst the Life of Saint Laurence O’Toole may well be that published in 1877 by Canon O’Hanlon, the Lives of the Irish Saints read by Matt may not be his multi-volume magnum opus but rather a series of penny pamphlets called Footprints of Ireland’s Saints issued by the Irish Messenger and issued in at least two small bound volumes with the title Lives of the Irish Saints. I have Volume II on my own bookshelves and given Matt’s fondness for this type of popular literature I wonder if this might have been the Lives of the Irish Saints collection which he read. In any case it remains true that books on the early Irish church and its saints form only a tiny fraction of the titles identified by Mary Purcell. Father Edmund’s point that Matt does not seem to have consciously read himself into adopting the austerities of historic Irish monasticism is therefore something to consider.


    Another practice of Matt’s which Mary Purcell describes also struck a chord with me:


    Several of his fellow-workers testified to a habit Matt had of keeping a pebble in his mouth – a small, smooth white pebble which he carried about with him. No one asked him why, nor did he volunteer any explanation.

    but she went on to describe how the pebble was employed during the visits of a friend who enjoyed smoking his pipe whilst he and Matt discussed their latest reading:


    When Mr Robbins called, Matt would ask him to take out his pipe and light up; the visitor did not like doing this as he thought it not quite right to enjoy in the other’s company a comfort of which Matt was depriving himself. But Matt would insist; “I have this” he would say going to the mantelpiece and fetching the pebble; “now, light up, John, and enjoy your smoke.” Then there were would follow a discussion of the last book read, while John Robbins puffed away at his pipe and Matt sucked meditatively on his pebble.

    Mary Purcell, Matt Talbot And His Times: a New Authentic Life of the Servant of God (1954), 134.

    The image of a man with a pebble in his mouth immediately brought to my mind the unusual Lenten discipline of early Irish saint Ultan Tua the ‘quiet man’ of Clane. The Martyrology of Donegal recorded on his December 22nd feast day: “This is the Ultan-Tua who used to put a stone in his mouth at the time of Lent, so that he might not speak at all.”


    I will close with another aspect of Matt Talbot’s spirituality, perhaps one less familiar to people in Ireland. In his 1980 study of the tradition of ‘holy folly’ Father John Saward cited Matt as an exemplar of a ‘Fool for Christ’s sake’, saying:

    Perhaps the most striking modern Irish holy man is Matt Talbot, ‘the Irish Worker’s Glory’, who was a fool for Christ’s sake in the classical sense.

    He too noted that Matt:

    embarked on a life of such heroism that it is difficult to believe we are describing a twentieth-century working man and not a fourth-century monk.


    and he concluded:

    Finally, there is his teaching on folly for Christ’s sake. Among the collection of tiny scraps of paper on which he wrote his thoughts and memorabilia, are the following:



    Oh King of Penitents who pass for fools in the opinion of the world but very dear to you oh Jesus Christ. 




    O Blessed Mother obtain from Jesus a share of His Folly.




    The Kingdom of Heaven was promised not to the sensible and the educated but to such as have the spirit of little children.

    John Saward, Perfect Fools: Folly for Christ’s Sake in Catholic and Orthodox Spirituality, (Oxford University Press, 1980), 208-210.


    Matt’s famous chains were discovered only when his body was being prepared at the Jervis Street Hospital morgue. The sister on duty that day, Sister Ignatius, gave this testimony:

    I was called and went, along with a nurse and a hospital porter, to prepare the body for burial. As I was cutting away the clothes from his arms, my scissors struck something hard. It was his chains. I didn’t know what to make of it – whether he was a saint or what he was. In a few minutes the porter also discovered chains binding his body around the waist. I remember the porter said, “He’s either a madman or a saint.” (italics mine)

    Rev. Albert H Dolan, O.Carm., We Knew Matt Talbot (Carmelite Press, 1948), 93-4.

    The anonymous porter may not have been consciously aware of the tradition of holy folly but his ‘madman or saint’ comment summarized it in a nutshell.

    On the Feast of All the Saints of Ireland, November 6, 1931, just six years after Matt’s death, the Most Rev. Edward Byrne, Archbishop of Dublin announced the opening of the Informative Process for his Beatification. A prayer was also authorized, one rather different in tone from the prayer in current use which concentrates on Matt’s patronage of those struggling with addictions. It reads:


    O Jesus, true friend of the humble worker, Thou hast given us in Thy servant Matthew a wonderful example of victory over vice, a model of penance and of love for Thy Holy Eucharist; grant, we beseech Thee, that we Thy servants may overcome all our wicked passions and sanctify our lives with penance and love like this.

    And if it be in accordance with Thy adorable designs that Thy pious servant should be glorified by the Church, deign to manifest, by Thy heavenly favours the power he enjoys in Thy sight, Who livest and reignest forever and ever. Amen.

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  • The Hymn of Saint Sanctain

    May 9 is one of the feast days of Saint Sanctán (Santán, Sanctáin) who, despite being hailed as ‘Bishop Sanctáin the famous’ in The Martyrology of Oengus, remains something of an enigma. Tradition claims that he was a Briton (Welsh) by birth who came to Ireland with his brother Madog (Madoc, Matoc) and credits him with the authorship of a Hymn beginning ‘I beseech the wonderful King’. This hymn was one of the early medieval sources rediscovered during the nineteenth century cultural revival. The version found in the Irish Liber Hymnorum was published at the end of the century and has been posted at the blog here, but below is an 1868 paper from the Irish Ecclesiastical Record, which had been founded three years earlier by the then Archbishop of Dublin, Paul Cullen. The article is unattributed but discusses the saint and his hymn using the text published by the editor and translator Whitley Stokes, who brought so many early medieval manuscripts to the attention of the wider Irish public. The author starts off somewhat confusingly by trying to claim a Cornish origin for a Saint Sennan, who is not actually our Saint Sanctain at all, neither is he the reputed brother of Saint Patrick. However, we soon move on to the work of the seventeenth-century hagiologist Father John Colgan who lays out the Irish cult of Saint Sanctán and places it in Leinster. Pádraig Ó Riain agrees, locating our saint at two main sites – Ceall Easpaig Shantáin (the church of Bishop Santán) in the parish of Tallaght, County Dublin and at Killalish (Ceall Dá Lis) in the parish of Kilranelagh, County Wicklow. Interestingly, the Dublin site is now known as Saint Anne’s Chapel, our saint having given way to Saint Anne, the grandmother of Christ. Ó Riain also argues that a northern church of Ceall Santáin in County Derry also represents the cult of our saint as does the parish of Santon in the Isle of Man.  There too Santán became confused with Saint Anne. So, overall, this ‘illustrious father, angel-soldier of bright, pure fame’ remains a rather intriguing saint:

    HYMN OF ST. SANCTAIN.

    ST. SANCTAIN was a native of Britain, and is supposed by some to be the same as St. Sannan, who was brother of our apostle, St. Patrick. The martyrologies, however, when commemorating St. Sanctain, are silent as to this fact; they are careful to mention that he was brother of the pilgrim, St. Matoc; and did any such exist, they would assuredly not have failed to refer to his relationship with our apostle. Their statements moreover as to his family and parentage are quite at variance with the ancient documents connected with St. Patrick’s life. There is in Cornwall a small port town and parish named from St. Sennan, and tradition says that this saint went thither from Ireland, and having died there in his hermitage, a church was erected over his remains. Capgrave too, in his Life of St. Wenefreda, states that this holy virgin was interred there prope Sanctum Sennanum. It is not improbable that this was the Sanctain who composed the hymn which we now publish.

    There can be no doubt that in the first ages of our faith the southern districts of England were a favourite resort of Irish saints, and Mr. Blight, in his description of the Cornish churches, writes, that “in the latter part of the fifth and beginning of the sixth century, a numerous company of Irish saints, bishops, abbots, and sons and daughters of kings and noblemen, came into Cornwall, and landed at Pendinas, a peninsula and stony rock where now the town of St. Ives stands.

    Hence they diffused themselves over the western part of the county, and at their several stations erected chapels and hermitages. Their object was to advance the Christian faith. In this they were successful, and so greatly were they reverenced, that whilst the memory of their holy lives still lingered in the minds of the people, churches were built on or near the sites of their chapels and oratories and dedicated to Almighty God in their honour. Thus have their names been handed down to us. Few of them are mentioned in the calendars or in the collections of the lives of saints, and what little is known of them has been chiefly derived from tradition”. He then mentions amongst the Irish saints whose memory is thus venerated there, St. Buriana, “a king’s daughter, a holy woman of Ireland”, St. Livinus, and our St. Sennen, “an Irish abbot, who accompanied St. Buriana into Cornwall”, St. Paul, St. Cheverne (i.e. Kieran), St. Breaca, St. Germoe, and others.

    Colgan, speaking of St. Sanctain, says: “Sanctain, a bishop, by birth a Briton, is honoured on the 9th of May, in the church of Killdaleas, in Leinster, according to the Martyrology of Tallaght and the Festologies of Aengus and Marianus: Samuel, a king of Britain, was his father, and Drechura, daughter of Muiredhac Muinderg, king of Ulster, was his mother”. The Martyrology of Aengus, preserved in the Leabhar Breacc, thus commemorates our saint at the 9th of May, “Bishop Sanctain of good repute”; and the gloss adds:

    “i.e., he was of Kill-da-leis, as Aengus says: and I know not where Kill-da-leis is: and to him belongs Druimlaighille in Tradraighe”.

    Another gloss adds : —

    “i.e., Bishop Sanctain was the son of Samuel Chendisel (low headed): Dectir, daughter of Muiredach Muinderg (red-necked), was his mother: as was prophesied:

    Bishop Sanctain is my beloved,
    The son of Samuel Chendisel,
    Dectir was his mother without stain,
    The daughter of Muiredach Muinderg”.

    It is not easy to fix with certainty the site of the church of Kill da-leis. Colgan tells us that it was in Leinster; and probably it was the present parish of Kildellig, in the barony of Upper Ossory, in the Queen’s County. In the MS. Visitation Book of Dr. James Phelan, appointed Bishop of Ossory in 1669, is preserved a list of the Patrons of the Churches of the Diocese, and in the deanery of Aghavoe we meet with this parish church of Kildelyg, and its patron is marked “Sanctus Ernanus sen Senanus, Abbas”. This can be no other than our St. Sannan, or Sanctain. The memory of St. Sanctain is also cherished in the very ancient church, now commonly called “St. Anne’s”, in the present parish of Rathfarriham: in the Register ” Crede mihi” written in the thirteenth century, it is called Killmesantan: and we learn from the Repertorium Viride that it retained the same name in 1532. In a valuation of 1547, it is called Templesaunton.

    The introduction to the hymn in the Liber Hymnorum is as follows:

    “Bishop Sanctain composed this hymn, and on his way from Cluain-Irard (Clonard) to Inis-Madoc he composed it. He was moreover a brother of Madoc, and both were Welshmen. Madoc came into Erin prior to bishop Sanctain. The cause of the composition of this poem was that he might be preserved from his enemies, and that his brother might admit him amongst his religious in the island. At that time he was ignorant of the Irish language (Scoticam linguam usque ad hanc horam non habuit), but God miraculously granted it to him. The time of its composition is uncertain”. (MS. St. Isidore’s, pag. 41).

    In the Martyrology of Donegal, the feast of St. Sanctain is thus registered on the 9th of May: “Sanctan son of Samuel Ceinnisel, bishop of Cill-da-les: Deichter, daughter of Muireadhach Muinderg, king of Uladh, was his mother, and the mother of Matoc the pilgrim”. On the feast of St. Matog (25th of April) the same is repeated: “Matog, the pilgrim. Deichter …… was his mother, and the mother of bishop Sanctan”.

    The only other document connected with bishop Sanctain which we have been able to discover, is the following short poem in his honour, which is added in the Roman MS. of the “Liber Hymnorum” immediately after his hymn:

    Bishop Sanctan, illustrious among the ancients,
    Angel-Soldier of pure, bright fame;
    My body is enslaved on Earth,
    May he receive my soul in Heaven.
    Offer a prayer for me, O Mary!
    May the mercy of the mystery be unto us;
    Against wounding, against danger, against suffering,
    O Christ! afford us thy protection,
    I implore the noble, everlasting King;
    May the Only-Begotten of God plead for us;
    Against sharp torments may
    The Son who was born in Bethlehem defend me.

    …..As regards the date of St. Sanctain’s hymn, it cannot be fixed with accuracy, as we are ignorant of the year of the saint’s demise. It seems however certain, that he flourished in the beginning of the sixth century. The title of illustrious among the ancients, given to him in the poem just cited, brings him back to the first fathers of our Church: the special archaic forms of his ‘difficult hymn’, as Mr. Stokes justly calls it, point to the same period, whilst his connection with St. Madog cannot be verified in any other age. There are many saints indeed who bear a similar name in our calendar; but there is only one in whom the epithet of Madog the pilgrim is verified, viz., the St. Cadoc, who holds so distinguished a place among the saints of Wales. He, too, was the son of a British prince, whilst, as Colgan writes, “he is justly reckoned among the Irish saints, as his mother, his instructors, and many of his relatives, were Irish, and he himself lived for some time in our island” (Acta SS. page 159). This distinguished antiquarian further tells us that he “is the same as St. Mo-chatoc”, a disciple of SS. Patrick and Fiecc, as we have seen in the March number of the Irish Ecclesiastical Record. Thus we have a clue to the Inis-Matog, in which St. Sanctain wished to take up his abode with his holy brother: for, St. Mochatoc, as we learn from his life, chose Inis-fail for his monastery, which no doubt was in after times from the name of this great founder styled by the religious Inis-Madoc.

    Hymn of St. Sanctain.

    I beseech the wonderful King of Angels,
    For his is the name that is mightiest;
    God be with me on my track, God on my left,
    God before me, God on my right.

    God to help me, O holy invocation!
    Against every danger that I encounter;
    Let there be a bridge of life under me,
    The blessing of God the Father over me.

    May the Noble Trinity awaken him,
    For whom a good death is not in store.
    The Holy Spirit, the Strength of Heaven
    God the Father, the great Son of Mary.

    May the great King, who knows our crimes,
    God of the noble sinless world,
    Be with my soul against every sin of falsity,
    That the torment of demons may not touch me.

    May God repel every sadness from me;
    May Christ relieve my sufferings;
    May the Apostles be around me,
    May the Trinity of witness come to me.

    May a flood of mercy come from Christ,
    Whose wounds are not hidden (from us):
    Let not death touch me,
    Nor bitterness, nor plague, nor disease.

    Let not a sharp cast touch me
    Apart from God’s Son, who gladdens and who mortifies:
    Let Christ protect me against every iron-death,
    Against fire, against the raging sea.

    Against every death-pool that is dangerous
    To my body, with awful storms,
    May God at every hour be with me,
    Against the wind, against the swift waters.

    I will utter the praises of Mary’s Son,
    Who battles our white battles,
    May God of the elements answer;
    A corslet in battle shall be my prayer.

    Whilst praying to God of the Heavens,
    Let my body be enduring penitent,
    That I may not go to awful Hell
    I beseech the King whom I have besought.
    I beseech, etc.

    P.S. Since this article was printed we happily learned that the three strophes given at pag. 320, though not printed by Mr. Stokes, were in reality preserved in the Liber Hymnorum, T.C.D. As this MS. presents some very important readings, we here insert its text:

    Bishop Sanctain, illustrious father,
    Angel-soldier of bright, pure fame;
    My body being freed on earth,
    May he receive my soul in Heaven.
    Offer a prayer for me, O Mary!
    That the heavenly mercy may be shown to us:
    Against wounding, against danger, against suffering,
    O Christ, afford us thy protection.
    I implore the noble, everlasting king;
    May the Only-begotten of God plead for us;
    Against sharp torments, may
    The Son who was born in Bethlehem defend me.

    THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD, APRIL, 1868, 317-324.

     

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